By Irfan Khan,
India has not celebrated its diversity but has only accommodated it. There is a covert thought that minorities will be a part of the mainstream soon. Relative insignificance of minorities is mainly because India is a democracy. Something has to be done to make them significant.
Democracies are by nature majoritarian and the tilt of policies is towards the majority. Majority culture gets construed as the national culture.
Study of the geographical spread of minorities suggests that Muslims constitute 13.4 % of the population, Christians 2.3 %, Sikhs 1.6 %, Buddhists 0.8 %, Jains 0.3 % and Parsis a few thousands. Bulk of Muslims are concentrated in four Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. In none of the major states in India, Muslims are less than five %. Christians are mainly concentrated in Kerala and four South Indian states and the North Eastern states. More than 60 % Sikh population is in Punjab while nearly all Sikhs live in North-western states. Major concentration of Buddhists is in the state of Maharashtra while Parsis mainly reside in Mumbai.
Two-thirds of Christians are converts from lower caste. Similarly, barring the four major communities among Muslims i.e., Sheikh, Syed, Mughal and Pathan, all other Muslims can trace their genealogical origin to the Hindus.
Muslims representation in all sectors of Indian life and development is abysmally low except in Bollywood. In 1952, Muslim representation in the Parliament was 4.3 % and the highest it soared was in the Parliament during 1984-89, when it stood at 8.4 %. At one point, it dipped to 2.9 %. Though there is a formidable concentration of Muslims in several constituencies but the multi-party and first-past-the-post electoral system works to their disadvantages and anti-minority parties mainly register their wins from these constituencies.
This is because several secular parties put up Muslim candidates from these electoral segments. Electoral trends show that the Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the today’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) received 15 % of upper caste votes in 1967. But the BJP’s share of the upper caste votes had risen to 52 % by the 2004 Lok Sabha election. Similarly the Jana Sangh’s share in Muslim votes was 2 % in 1967 and its successor, the BJP claimed 11 % Muslim votes in 2004 elections. This explains adequately as to why Muslims got further marginalized in matters of legislative representation.
On the administrative side too, Muslim representation is abysmally low. Muslims barely represent 5 % among the personnel employed by the Central government. Their representation in judiciary is a little better i.e., 7 %, yet far below what their numbers deserve. Representation of Muslims becomes paltrier as one ascends to look for them in the higher echelons of the bureaucracy.
Muslim literacy rate stands at around 60 % while the national literacy rate exceeds 70 % today. The Christians are well represented in education, health and other social sectors of development, mainly because of the tradition of social service by the missionaries. But Muslim politics has mainly revolved around the axis of cultural identity and mobilization as seen on the emotive issues such as Muslim Personal Law, Urdu, Aligarh Muslims University et al.
But a new movement is rising from among the backward sections of the Muslim community, which focuses on socio-economic issues. There are bright patches here and there. In south Indian states, the literacy rate among Muslims is higher than the state’s average literacy rate. States such as Andhra Pradesh have implemented reservation for the community. In the same state, Muslim representation in police and certain other departments is stated to be 16 %, which is much higher than the share in state population i.e. 9 %. It serves as an index that when people are offered privileges and facilities, they themselves become pressure groups.
One of the major reasons for Muslim backwardness is emptying of North Indian states of Muslim middle class due to migration to Pakistan on the eve of Partition. Curiously, decline of Muslim representation in several northern states coincided with the rise of political and social awakening.
We require to ponder over a few issues.
So far, the Indian state has engaged with religious minorities as legal minorities, not as citizens. Invocation of secularism is very formal. But what is it in concrete terms, is yet to be explained. Secondly, internal democratisation among Muslims and Christians is far weaker than among Sikhs and Buddhists. This is owing to the fact that Muslims were tagged ‘conquerors’ and Christians were stigmatized with ‘civilising mission’ of the British colonial rule.
Constitution is our greatest guarantee, as it ensures equality, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and safeguards against discrimination. Muslim identity across the world today is in complex warp, post 9/11 terror attacks in America. It redefined the manner Muslims were to be globally seen and treated. As Islamophobia becomes a disconcerting phenomenon in the West, Muslims in India too have been struggling to reassert their identity. They are seemingly at odds with their fellow citizens espousing Hindutva ideology.
A community or a tribe historically marginalised by dominating elites need to be protected by the State otherwise the aspiration of an egalitarian society remains unfulfilled. The Constitutional guarantees often gets downplayed when it comes to securing rights of the marginalised caste group, tribe or religious minorities such as Christians and Muslims. Although Dalits and Christians too bear with state apathy and provocations of non-state actors of Hindutva ideology, I wish to focus on the straining relationship between Hindus and Muslims vis-à-vis the rising Hindutva jingoism. Such unsettling situations encourage chronic identity crisis and sense of social alienation among the community in distress.
Minorities have to knock at the doors of the Courts every time conflict arises on the definition of minority and interpretation of the Article 30 as no legislation has been put in place to ensure the protection of rights and interests of minorities. Amelioration of the general lot of the minorities and arresting the downslide is possible by: First, ensuring accessibility to quality education and health facilities and insurance by the State and second, redefining the madarsa system. Third suggestion could be a loud thinking. In order to make the system inclusive, we need to legislate that no MP or MLA will be declared elected if he does not get one-third votes of the minorities of the Constituency he is elected from. Fourth, multi-religious instructions should be provided in schools in order to inculcate the spirit of secularism.
——-
(Irfan Khan, a freelance journalist and an RTI Activist, is pursuing PhD in Film Studies from the Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, Aligarh Muslim University).